TRUE Commission

TRUE Commission — Feb 5, 2026

>> So we will hold off taking any action, including approval of the minutes until we have a quorum until such time. As we have one, we will go ahead and move forward with the auditor's report. Mr. Carter, I'm sorry. We need to introduce ourselves. I apologize. Stephanie Ogles the North Sea Pack Bush 1000 southwest see packed like past Council. President Spar Council President Raymond, a southeast CPAC around Sale nightly CPAC. Carter Council auditors office. I can see council research. Thank you very much. We have the 3 excuse absences. Who are they? I received excuse those from Kevin Lawyers Funky Sean and from Mr. Mchugh, thank you. All right. Case Mr. Carter Floor is yours. Thank you. To the chair to the commission of the Counselor's office has not released a report since last year committed commission meeting. >> The I did have a question from the chair of from the last meeting as 2 regarding who the officers of Fmg I were at the G I was one of the companies that had made a contribution to this year's investigative fund and the chair and asked me that the chair will need to know the officers and the registered agent as well as the fmg. I have any contracts with the city and that energy. I was formally known as facilities management group AEK. They change your name in 2015 to at the G. I first question that the research to the cities procurement area and they do not appear to have any contracts with the city either name and the Reg data isn't as listed as registered Agent Solutions Inc out of Tallahassee, Florida. The president is Darren Ross. Vice president CFO is Chris Head and the company, by the way, is located in Woodstock, Georgia. Fmg. I is so it's it's a and the secretary is Lionel Pa Stick and the vice president is Luke Hardman and those are the offers they do various construction work as a coincidence of traveling home. I notice off a 23, the new Walmart that just been built out there at Argyle Forest and that area they had their banner hanging of a new construction work so in the city. So that's kind of what they do. >> Are they a Florida domestic entity or of Georgia foreign entity there, Georgia. They're there for non profit Corporation Sng. I incorporated yes, if Im Jai incorporated, correct isn't is registered in Georgia. Any questions? Any other comments that concludes my report. Great. All right. We'll move on to public comments. Do we have anyone, some public comments to address the commission regarding matters of the body to speak to the commission regarding items on the agenda that are before the commission today? >> All right. My name is John J. New knee Jacksonville City Council resolution 2023 0, 1, 9, and City Council district for CPAC District. 3 school board district 3 and its star saying I go to fund. The ethics is gone, Mr. Khan did, too, but no, no. This is CPAC, Mr. Nanny. >> This decision is not addressing matters at 6 commission. Will you need to hear this year many so you're out of order, if you would like to speak to the commission regarding something that is on our agenda before the commission. You have that right? >> Well, you know, tax ation revenue utilization of expenditures is just our entire city budget. >> So and, you know, it has to be on the agenda today is for me. >> Well, you know, I just walked in here. You know what, what's on the agenda that it's, you know, whatever your to hear. What let me just say, though. >> Ethics is us the question. Honestly, it's your question that you asked a question. What's on the agenda on the agenda? >> A huge end under your comments. You know, here here again, you know, I have submitted a new revised format for all future agenda. It's, you know, want tell you, you know, here's where do you see here? >> Mr. Many years that are out of order. Would you please have a seat at the well? Reefs is just running. Well, you're out of order. You're welcome to speak to the commission website guarding the council auditors report number 8.99. that brought to the commission last month and which we are going to have some additional comments today. You have comments regarding that report it. I mean, that's the only thing I'm allowed to speak on this or now now point of order, you know, when you don't know. Well, isn't there another part for public comment where somebody no public voted? We adopted our bylaws and last month's meeting and we are focusing public comments on matters be fit or the body. It burned labor and water. But up, Lewis, other words, you don't make a point of order. You are here to speak to the commission, really do have other. You have other members that they can, you know, just to reconsider the bylaws readopt it last month's meeting after they were adopted. There was no motion to reconsider going on on the radar in adopting. >> Well, I'm I'm just talking about even right now. You know. >> The motion I think consider is regarding an action taken by the commission. We do not have a quorum. So no action is being taken. It am I allowed to speak for one minute later on us or you are allowed to speak for 3 minutes it on any item on the agenda before the commission at today's made it a habit. The chair's comments the minutes they are doesn't certain comments of the chair. If you would like to tell you what I'll do for you, if you want to sit down over, look over my comments and come back and speak about my comments, I will give you that latitude. Does that sound right? We will recess for one minutes. You can look at my comments. You will have a right to come back and address the commission regarding my comments. How's that sound? Fair enough? Sure light. We'll take a one minute recess. Mister. Many can prepare his comments regarding the comments of the champ. So we are still without a quorum. Still one short. So have a quick. So was that on the last meeting, the bylaws Readopt step as amended bill? I feel like I'm ready to go ready. All right. Don't even need a mint here. >> Review of the 6 goals for the commission in 2026. And again, Ogc should be here revise the bylaws. I have submitted a revision for discussion today and to be subject to further amendments. >> So there you go. Further amendments, any member and nation is free to bring amendments to the bylaws it time and their rights and procedure in the bylaws by which they can be amended. >> You know, and again, I wish there was juicy was here. >> Yes, many OJ is not required to be here. All of us are getting all right. I'm going to rule you out of order and I'm going to ask you to take a seat. You are not here to address comments about Ogc. You're welcome to speak to anything in my comments. I'll give you that led to 2. >> All right. There you have it subject to further the that's right there. I'm not an attorney, but and that seems to me like, OK, there's hope. >> If you would read the bylaws that were adopted, it will explain to you the process for amendments in the future getting is there anything else you would like to address to the commission regarding items on the agenda? You know, yet yes or no, you know, do yes or no. >> Items on the agenda. All I have is Mr. Carter's 8.99 talk about. That's it. I mean, that is really that's what's on our region today. Yes, sir. Thank you. We are still without a court room. We will move on then 2 comments of the chair. So I have submitted a revised format for all future agendas. >> We will begin meeting at 4 o'clock. We will meet for 30 minutes in committee because our work the order of work is focused on spending for the next 6 months. The only committee that will meet initially will be the spending committee of us who are here today. We need to make a decision about if you would like to be on the spending committee. We could simply have the spending committee to me and the commission will meet as a committee of the whole regarding that subject matter. And I can, you know, the product of the chairs. I can point all the commission members to the spending committee commission members to the income committee. And then according to the schedule of our work, that respective committee will be the committee that meets from 4 to four-thirty going forward. I have a propose that we convene the meetings at 4. >> To allow for meetings of the committees to consider the matters before them with the full commission meeting at 4.30 until 06:00PM. So in reviewing the goals, the first goal was to revise the bylaws. Those revisions were submitted and they were adopted at last month's commission meeting. Those bylaws do have a provision for amendments. So that goal has been achieved. We are going to review all city spending from January to June. This review will be completed prior to the submission of the budget by the mayor in mid-July. So that will be our first order of work. We will then be be reviewing all of the independent 40's from July to December of this year. I think we need to consider changes to their charter charters that had any financial impact on the stakeholders, our citizens, our residents who are our taxpayers. We will be working on updating the JSO staffing study to be completed by June of 2026, I have an idea on how we can achieve that. If anyone would be willing to meet in between commission meetings, we can have a noticed meeting and will be sort of against the school board, calls it a than what they call it a work, the workshop. That's it. We can do that as a workshop, but it will be publicly noticed and we can work on that. Then bring it to our spending committee during the course of a committee day committee. Time from 4 to four-thirty. If anybody is interested in working with me on that, I would welcome your input. Anybody have an interest in updating it with. That's the JSO staffing study. I think that was done Mr. Barr, before you came on the commission, give you a quick summary of it. So on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement does an annual report and in it they review all of the law enforced law enforcement agencies in the state by county and by municipality. We are unique because we are a county in a municipality in order to look at what it does is it takes the a number of sworn law enforcement officers and it takes the number of the populations of the various cities. And you can then determine a staffing ratio. The time of the study we did this in 2021 and the ratio is I remember what's 2.0. 7, 6, was the state average. The ratio for the city of Jacksonville for the consolidated city of Jacksonville was 1.7 6. That number would tell you that we were deficient by 0.8 on the base of a million people. We are roughly 800 officers short. The staffing study proposed a way to increase spending to be allocated for hiring additional police officers and over an eight-year period it was to cover from fiscal year. 23 24 through fiscal year 30 31 so over that eight-year period we would have reached the state average into the chair. How often did you say that's done? That things won't be the staffing study relative to the report that this commission did was done that want it to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement does. Its annual report is she comes out sometime in June. I think it's about a year behind date. So probably the most recent data that would be in there is probably going to be as of 2024, the most recent data. So if anybody is interested in that we will love like undertake to flee age. Okay. Alright, is anyone else interested in doing that? Are you OK? And so much of an interest in that one. Okay. All right. His uncle's be okay. All right. So what I would propose we could do, Colleen, how early in the morning could we have a workshop to and can we do it in one of the conference rooms upstairs would be do it in one of these rooms down here. >> So to that, you know, you can't it upstairs. They don't have a meeting for the public upstairs anymore. I get your 8 so it can't be before 8 cups. >> We could. We could come in 8 and meet until 9.30. Would you present with to me the proposed time when you give a little to do that? Sure. It depends on what day work best for you to you. Tell us we are available. We will work around your schedule than I would propose that based on when his hands he's available, we could meet from 8 to 9.30, Mr. Barr, you that flexibility. Are you tied up in the morning 6 months or weekly? What he told probably once a month. I think Michigan polling managed. Okay, great. All right. So miss and see if you'll come up with a potential schedule, then we will tackle that and workshops. The next item is to review all City Department operations. I would propose that we convene a special Blue Ribbon Citizens Committee to assist the commission with his a**. There are people out in the community who have vast collection of experience from the corporate sector. >> And they are. >> Experts and analyzing the operations of large organizations. That's sort of the purpose of this body. But I I think that additional expertise could be brought in. I guess we we need to determine if our ordinance would allow us to do that. The ordinance that created the Truth Commission and I have not read it recently side off the top of my head. No. >> And then in. >> That it may not be possible. But what we could do would be if, you know, a vase of somebody who has a specific level of expertise coming out of the corporate sector or who has worked in a government agency, then we could ask him to come in and maybe speak to the commission as a presenter. >> Mr. S to the chair at an idea you can strike it down and it's not good. But we may be able to look at past board members of the independent authorities that may be open to giving us some information inside information that may be, you know, on paper, we would know, you know, information that varies with the city would have their contact information and said that's just not that's that's a pretty good idea. Be very open to that. We will explore that over the next few months. >> And the number 6 is to review all income sources for the city. And we're going to do a little bit of that today, but we want to do a little bit more in-depth analysis him. I would propose we do that between July and August of this year and can be pretty intense because hopefully we can get that completed before September 1st so that we could present a report to the city council as they complete their deliberations on the city budget. Those are my comments sort of run over a little bit on that under new business. We are going to and we're a little bit ahead of schedule action. Their goal is to actually be out of here by 5.30, not 5.15, on. So we will move forward last month, Mr. Carter presented the council auditors report number 8.99, and it is not a 104 pages total. I think it is. All right. And but the meat of the report is on Page's 20's, forth ages. 25 26 of that report. So what I did is I compiled those relevant pages and it's essentially the it's a quarterly financial summary that the sub fund level of funds number 1, 1, 1, which is the General Fund operating account and or operating fund. And so I took the data from fiscal year 20 to 23. 23 24 24 25 which encompasses report Mr. Carter gave to us last month. I-2 compound those and I laid them out in a spreadsheet by year. So this would be the report that has 4 columns revised budget your today, Actuals incumbents, variants. And you'll see that for 23. 24 25 it lists all of the revenue by year and it lists what they had budgeted, what the you put the year-to-date actual numbers were and then incumbents, Coleman, a variance. Coleman does that for revenues and expenditures for all of 3 years now, Mr. Carter and I had a conversation on Tuesday. I think it was. And he's going to give us a very, very high level overview explaining in conferences because you see what you'll see is specially on the revenue on the expected expenditures side. You will see that there is a budgeted level of expenditures. Then there's an actual level of expenditures in the column for incumbent says, and there's an explanation, but he's gonna provide for us. And then that creates the variance. There's a variance in them both on the revenue and on the expenditure side. So for instance, let's focus on 23, disco fun. Watch a clip. So the total revenue budgeted revenue was 1 billion, 581 million, 291,114 dollars. First page that the hand that you got it right there. There was actually a 1 million, 950,000 dollar negative variance on expect revenues me that actual revenues came in a little bit under what was budgeted about 2 2 million dollars that if you look down below on expenditures, total expenditures with budgeted to be 1 billion, 630 million, 923 $1260. An operating deficit of 49 million dollars. Is that correct? Mr. Carter, that was what was budgeted for 23 and are caught in the yes column revised budget. Okay. And that looks I mean, the spaced off the court, Lisa Marie was forced to correct. So if we actually looked at the actual financial statements, we will see what actually happened. This was based on the quarterly summary. And so the books were still open at the time of these numbers being compiled, correct? And then adjusting entries were done. And then we had a complete set of financial statements. All right. So for the purposes of today's exercise, Mr. Carter is going to explain to us what encumbrance is under expenditures set fair. >> Basically, Rick and conferences is a commitment to expend funds for good in certain goods and services that has been fully executed. Yet another words, it requires the funds be reserved for future use, such as with a purchase order, a contract, things like that. You wouldn't cover the funds for that period and it can be carried over to succeeding fiscal years. The in order for that happened expenditure has to be for the same purpose of which the incumbent was originally created are established. So that's basically what incumbents it's it's a it's a commitment that works to expand these funds. We're not we're not going to do it all in this one new fiscal year. So the commitment carries forward over fiscal years. >> I just confirmation that the teacher to the council auditor is so that would be if we were doing a pop up park or something, they were getting something done with that parking is going to carry over into the next year in it, budgeted in this that would carry over. Is that like if he still had been paid yet? >> The than ever that the if you uncover there, there's a nother Funchal to carry forward. >> And that's a little bit different. It's it's kind of along the same lines. But it's it's basically. >> It's that the beef, the carryforward is. >> A disused continues touring conference for it for for your purposes here. >> Say you you had a a contract, 4, some of the piece of equipment or something that that you want to maintain or or it was going to be contracted for several parks. But you are going get it done one fiscal year, so you wouldn't cover the contract to carry the funds forward until the contract was done or the project was completed. >> And we might see this for the acquisition of land and construction of a fire station in the equipment in the time station. Well, then you get the budget in one fiscal year but expended in the next. Then you're getting into the cip. Okay. All right. So going to stay focused on Operation Operations, right? >> Okay. I to get week at. Yeah. >> A recent purchase. Order for got goods and services. You know, janitorial services for a couple coming in. You know, you've been encumbered contract to cover several years percent buildings that that and that would, you know, cover over over the fiscal years 2. Yeah, thank you. >> Okay. So along those lines and looking at in conferences for fiscal 23, professional and contractual services, 77 million was budgeted. 65 million was actually spent. So that is a a the 12 million dollar difference that 12 million dollars at. We're not spent. They uncovered 6.6 million. So the other 5 million for 88 would be a variance. This case it would be a positive variance because it's money that was budgeted but not spent is it would be a federal variance. Okay. What happens in my question is to me, 6.6 million out of a 7.7 of out of a 77 million dollar appropriation. That's close to 10%. Is it common to have that great of an encumbrance? I don't know the answer that question. How common is it? Is this it would this be a judgment call by the administration and how that money is being well spent? It's it just says based on like I said, >> getting goods and services and things like that that are spent. And one fiscal year, you encumbered those amounts. The issue for this one contracted to carry to go into the next few fiscal years. So and to be spent like it might not be multiple. I mean, might it may just be for the next year, things like that. So I don't know. It's just based on the spending and the incumbent says are are normal and governmental county and things like that. But I'm so. >> So lo first, go to the next fiscal year to fiscal year. Yes, sir. >> We're talking about so that 5 point with 8. I mean, 48,000. Plus, what happens to that just goes back into the general fund? Well, I can't I can't tell you exactly what happens. This one-line item when you need those that are got well between the U, it may be used to cover those expenditure line items that that, you know, have an unfavorable variance, things like that. Ultimately, if you when you win win, all the books are closed and everything's said and done in the general fund. If you do have you know, there were various it would go into a bench. Ali would go into fund balance from that. There's a lot of iterations before I can't I can't say that sold 5.4 million went into fund balance that I don't know that. >> So this is a little bit of an educational exercise. But I think for our purpose is really to get into a material analysis of what's going on. I'm gonna rework this in this information using actual financial statements that after the books have been closed, I would go in and I will re analyze that information and present that next month. This this is going to be this is going to be a learning process for us. We've never ever dug into revenues and expenditures in this much detail in the years that I've been back on this commission now. So for our purposes, for educational purposes, will those financial statements Mr? Carter, will they show incumbents isn't variances once the books are closed. >> The financial statements will show Encumbered says there should be no variance that well, she is. It could be because they budgeted acts. But you spent X -2 and encumber but X plus 2. And it's been a while since I looked up to. >> Yeah, at first, but I don't believe the show actual expenditures. They don't show necessarily what was budgeted OK on budget basis. They show the actual expenditures. >> So how how do we know that the city is not exceeding its budgetary authority with no catches that ugas when your lease the quarterly summaries help do that because you're you're looking, we're is for view 4 times a year. Well, the 4th time is actual Ys. But we're looking at projections to see if the first 3 quarters we're looking at projections to see okay, you projected overs and you know, and things like that and specially I'm I'm I'm mainly look at then couple independent authorities. But, you know, we we look to see if they're going to overspend their budget and things like that. And we do the analysis of of looking at the projections to see an end to see what the snapshot of this that this school, you know, is there is this or are there any funds or sub funds of the city? You know that it's having a cash issue or things like that. And that's just a that's part of our review. And we were for and report on this and the and the and the report you and I discussed Tuesday that I think the next page after this one is where we have expenditures by dep